The Growth of the WNBA: For Better or For Worse?

Savannah Brooks ’26

Managing Editor

The growth of women’s sports over the last few decades has been incredible to see. As an avid sports fan and a former amateur athlete myself, I found so much love and support in women’s sports, especially basketball, growing up. I frequented University of Maryland women’s basketball games and was constantly watching the Washington Mystics as a little girl. With the recent rise of interest in women’s basketball, however, I have found myself drifting farther from the sport. While I used to flock to social media accounts like @espnw to make sure I was updated on all of Brittany Griner’s highlights or to keep up on Kelsey Plum’s race to break the NCAA single-season scoring record, I now often scroll right past them when they come across my feed. This is not because I am uninterested in the new generation of stars; rather, I have become discouraged by the crowd that has flocked to the sport from the men’s side, bringing the same bigoted hate and rigid expectations for players that surrounds the NBA. Caitlin Clark, who has spurred most of this newfound interest in the WNBA, is a fantastic player and fun to watch, but it is no coincidence that Clark, an unquestionably white, straight, point guard from the great white state of Iowa has become these new fans’ god — especially when she is pitted against Angel Reese, an unapologetically Black forward from Baltimore.

Even as a white child growing up in the suburbs of Maryland, I was still subconsciously aware of the way that women’s basketball celebrated the excellence of Black women and allowed for a radically safe space for LGBTQ+ women. Did that mean that, as a high schooler on my school’s basketball team, I was profiled as “dyke-y,” even at a liberal school? Unfortunately, it did. But all of that profiling came from outside of the sport. No matter my qualms with my teammates or coaches, fluidity in sexuality and gender identity was accepted as completely normal, if not simply standard, within the sport itself. Even my 85-year-old coach would say not only “boys are bad,” but “girls are bad” when discouraging us from letting relationships get in the way of basketball. I played a “gay sport,” yes, as people often told me, but that was a beautiful thing. I felt uniquely celebrated as a lesbian, whether participating in fan culture or playing, in a way I did not anywhere else. My heroes were an incredibly diverse and powerful group of women who were celebrated for their powerful bodies, Black skin and tendency to marry the women they were playing against. I am worried for the girls of the future if these women who were once uniquely celebrated continue to be treated with the same vitriol they are now.

WNBA star (and dare I say, GOAT?) A’ja Wilson mentioned in an interview with ESPN in early October that she “dreaded” being in Indiana, Clark’s homeground, for away games. On an @espnw/@espn Instagram post promoting said article, some of the top comments which garnered hundreds, if not thousands of likes include: “No one watches wnba we watching caitlin clark,” “CC is the reason i watch wnba. No one Cares about these dudes with wigs,” and “White girl gets attention and now all the black woman athletes gotta play the victim card.” It is true that these posts about female athletes get more attention as viewership rises, but, as Wilson herself put it in the aforementioned interview, “we’re grateful in this space, in a game that’s growing, but it’s like, ‘Damn, at what cost? What are we doing?’” Many argue that Clark is bringing hope and inspiration to young girls who want to one day play basketball professionally, but what about the young Black girls? The 14-year-olds just figuring out their sexuality? Will they want to play a sport where Chennedy Carter, a Black woman who looks like them, gets mocked, misgendered and compared to a troll online after going viral for a flagrant foul on Clark?

Bigotry is certainly not new to women’s basketball, but it is becoming more acceptable by the minute. The sport that was once radically accepting in a way that was almost impossible to find in any other space is in the midst of a violent coup that is attempting to create a WNBA that is more like the NBA in allowing for the suppression of diverse identities, even in a sport that could not function without its Black athletes. I for one do not want the WNBA to parrot a league that turned its back on a former superstar after rumors circulated that he might be bisexual. Does the WNBA value revenue and ratings over the safety and well-being of its players who do not look like Clark? I certainly hope not.